D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s attempt to take control of the district’s police force, hours after the Trump administration named Drug Enforcement Administration head Terry Cole as the “emergency police commissioner” in Washington with all the powers of a police chief.
Schwalb said the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, aims to get a ruling that Trump’s takeover of the city’s police department is illegal. A hearing is scheduled for 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT).
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement, “The Trump Administration has the lawful authority to assert control over the D.C. Police, which is necessary due to the emergency that has arisen in our Nation’s Capital as a result of failed leadership.”
The lawsuit came after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued an order late Thursday transferring control of the police department from the city to the DEA’s Cole.
Trump said on Monday he was deploying hundreds of National Guard troops to Washington and temporarily taking over the city’s police department to curb what he has depicted as a crime emergency in the U.S. capital, though statistics show incidents of violent crime have dropped. Washington has a population of about 700,000. As part of that action, federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, the DEA, and Customs and Border Patrol, have deployed agents to patrol the streets and carry out arrests. Trump, who has suggested he could take similar actions in other Democratic-controlled cities including New York and Chicago, has sought to expand the presidency in his second term, inserting himself into the affairs of major banks, law firms and elite universities while extracting political and financial concessions. Bondi’s order said the city must receive approval from Cole before it can issue any directives to the roughly 3,500-member police force. It also sought to rescind several of the police department’s prior directives, including one that addressed its level of involvement with federal immigration enforcement.
A Justice Department spokesperson did not have any immediate comment on the lawsuit that described Bondi’s actions as a “brazen usurpation of the District’s authority over its own government.”
Schwalb wrote in a social media post on Friday, “This is the gravest threat to Home Rule DC has ever faced, and we are fighting to stop it.”
The 1973 D.C. Home Rule Act is a federal law that established local self-governance for the District of Columbia.
It includes a provision that gives the U.S. president the power to control the D.C. Police in response to “special conditions of an emergency nature” for up to 30 days. The 30-day period can be extended only by a joint resolution of both chambers of the U.S. Congress, something Trump has suggested he might seek.
Some legal experts said Trump has exceeded his authority under the Home Rule Act, arguing the text of the statute does not authorize a complete presidential takeover of the police force.
Williams Banks, a professor of national security law at Syracuse University, said DC’s attorney general has “very solid arguments” that Trump has exceeded the authority granted to him by Congress, but the unprecedented nature of Trump’s actions makes it difficult to assess what a judge will do.
“There’s no playbook for this,” Banks said. “There’s no precedent either way.”
One challenge for Washington’s Attorney General is that the U.S. Supreme Court has in some cases endorsed broad assertions of presidential authority.
“Historically, courts have been very deferential, for better or worse, to presidential declarations of emergency,” said Jill Hasday, a University of Minnesota law professor.
The lawsuit, which names Trump, Bondi, Cole, and others as defendants, intensifies a growing battle over Washington between Bondi and Mayor Muriel Bowser, who have emerged as the public faces of the power struggle.
The political calculus for Bowser, a Democrat, has been complex this year since Trump came to office in January.
She has shown a willingness to cooperate with Trump on issues including law and order, as the city is significantly reliant on federal funding. Yet at the same time she wants to show her voters in an overwhelmingly Democratic city that she’s upholding liberal values, including opposition to Trump’s immigration crackdown. She has criticized the deployment of troops onto Washington’s streets, and decried the move to attempt a federal takeover of the city’s police force.
Washington’s move on Thursday appeared designed to show who ultimately is in charge of Washington’s law enforcement, which will form the heart of the legal arguments.
